TL:DR: The Genesis Question part twenty-seven

Hi, Everybody!

3 August 14

Dear Troy & Mia; David & Marie:

Last week, I forgot to address THE LEGS as metaphysical expression of the creation of our planet.  The most relevant passage about legs that I ever read was in the MAKING BABIES book that I cited in THE LAST DAY's prologue, having to do with the XY chromosome or the XX chromosome (I forget which) where -- if the balance disproportionately favoured the female, -- you ended up with very long legs, legs which occupied a more than usual proportion of the body's mass.  So it seems to me that, while men and women both have legs, legs are a female-natured metaphysical expression.  Which doesn't contain the "God particle".  I say that because the thumb -- the ultimate expression of the "God particle" -- "ends" the expression that leads from body to arm to hand, whereas there is no comparable expression which completes the leg.  A big toe is not a a thumb, metaphysically speaking. 

Okay, back to the Book of Ezekiel. I'm not going to get very far this week. Chapter 29 is pretty straightforward but difficult to explain, so I'm only going to be able to address a few verses:

EZEKIEL 29

Chapter 29, as I read it, continues the motif of God having given YHWH enough rope, the YHWH now finds the need to hang his/her/its self inescapable, continuing on to Egypt and directly Ezekiel to prophecy against Egypt in verses 1 and 2. 

If I'm correct in my theories about YHWH, Egypt is a profoundly YHWHistic expression, both "not God" and "anti-God" and dating back prior to our own epoch. 

That is, at the time that A Dam and Chauah were created, there was already the Egyptian monarchy/nation, ruled by Pharaohs, an expression of the as-yet-then unnamed YHWH.  So, YHWH turning against Egypt -- not knowing that the YHWH in many ways, IS Egypt -- is a remarkable opportunity for God.  Of which God attempts to take full advantage.  Although in a way that's a little complicated to explain.  When God says in verse 3:

Speak and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold I against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river mine own, and I have made for my self

He's addressing the YHWHistic usurpation.  God's medium is water and the YHWH's medium is the earth.  So what God is saying -- as a a prompt in the hopes of getting the YHWH to reiterate the judgement -- is that God (and YHWH? YHWH, what do you say to this?) is opposed to Pharaoh, the great dragon…

(dragons don't exist, except metaphorically.  When God refers to a dragon in our epoch, as I read it, what he is referring to is the "serpent in the garden" which also didn't exist. Serpents don't talk.  Chauah seduced herself into eating the fruit as a proxy of YHWH.  There may have been a snake nearby, but voice she heard was the voice of the earth, YHWH.  Once entrenched in Scripture, however, there are only two choices: admit that serpents can't talk and find another more accurate model of creation -- Genesis 1, as opposed to Genesis 2 and 3 -- or face the peril of the fictitious talking snake, over the course of thousands of years, evolving into a fictitious metaphysical dragon. It's  "O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive" but on a much higher level of expression and metaphysics)

…that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river my own and I have made for my self.

The Egyptian YHWH -- the portion of the earth which underlies the nation-state of Egypt -- does indeed "lie in the midst" of several rivers.  Using "midst" God allows for two different interpretations: 

The accurate one is that Egypt exists directly adjacent to and in direct proximity to the rivers of Egypt.  God is in the rivers and YHWH is in the land. The inaccurate one -- which the YHWH favours and then chooses -- is that Egypt exists INSIDE the rivers.  "Midst" covers both meanings. The latter is the usurpation construct of the YHWH.  What God is saying is that the YHWH is saying, "I am the river and I made the river".  That is, you don't see accurately. You aren't the river, you aren't IN the river and you didn't make the river.

In answer to the prompt, the YHWH says

But I will put my hooks in thy jaws and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales

The "putting my hooks in thy jaws" recurs in the Book of Job.  It's the point where the "talking snake" not only evolves over time into a dragon, it also evolves into an aquatic dragon, Leviathan.  It's both literally inaccurate (there are no literal aquatic dragons) and metaphysically accurate (by entrenching the talking snake in YHWHistic scripture, the YHWH makes it inevitable that the fundamental lie will enlarge itself into a metaphysical dragon and by attempting to usurp God's place, makes it inevitable that there will need to be an invented aquatic dragon of similarly grandiose proportions to keep the construct going).

This becomes, variously, the red dragon of John's Apocalypse, Moby Dick, the whale that swallows Jonah, Giganto (I think he was called) in Pinocchio, etc. 

The YHWH -- as the would-be usurper "God" -- definitely has a strong -- and reasonably accurate -- mental image of Leviathan as very difficult to extract from the "midst of his rivers".  It's certainly one of the problems faced by God:  how to extract YHWH from God's context and get YHWH to perceive his/her/its nature accurately.  "You aren't IN the rivers, and you didn't MAKE the rivers. You're in the earth and the earth is one of My, God's creations."     

And I will leave thee into the wilderness

The KJV interpolates "thrown" into the text:  "And I will leave thee THROWN into the wilderness" but I'm pretty sure that isn't what the YHWH said in response to God's prompt.  It expresses the YHWH's confusion here at the apex of "Our Biblical Story Thus Far". 

Phonetically it sounds like "And I will LEAD thee into the wilderness" which reads one way:

But how do you "lead" an aquatic dragon into the wilderness?  The YHWH's visualization breaks down at the malapropism.  The "hooks in the jaws" the YHWH can "see" mentally.  It's like a combination bridle and fish hook.  Immense!  Big enough to steer Leviathan!  But how do you steer an immense aquatic beast ONTO land and INTO the wilderness from "his rivers"? 

With only a slight variation it also reads:

And I will leave thee in the wilderness….

(Which, it seems to me, brings it into closer proximity to God's intention for the YHWH.  At a deep, subconscious level, the YHWH understands that he/she/it isn't God and that the whole idea -- talking snake, Leviathan and all -- needs to be abandoned, left in the wilderness and not retained where Egypt's monarchy/nation has actually hatched out, incarnated as a political structure and expression of humanity.)

…thee and all the fish of thy rivers.  Thou shalt fall upon the face of the field, thou shalt not be brought together nor gathered: I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fouls of the heaven.  

 As I read it, the YHWH's confusion persists.  There is an urge simultaneously metaphysical, conscious, unconscious and real towards "casting out".  An urge to be rid of Leviathan.  Of course, to the YHWH, in many ways, God is Leviathan.  An immense presence that can't be dispensed with nor gotten around. God is the usurper as the YHWH sees it.  But, at one level or another, the YHWH must be aware that there is no form or degree of leverage that makes "casting out" God possible.  And, in fact, the actual job facing the YHWH is only slightly less daunting.  The YHWH can visualize SELF-control only to the extent of the means -- his hook in his jaws for steering (leverage) -- and the ultimate end of seeing the YHWH's own base nature "fall upon the face of the field" nevermore to be "brought together nor gathered".  It's the "in between" that's problematic. 

[Or, more accurately, only SEEMS problematic. Parenthetically, I think the Synoptic Jesus addresses this very thing at a mid-point between God and YHWH -- dealing with the perceived impossible immensity -- in Matthew 17:17-20 when the disciples are complaining about their inability to cast out an unclean spirit from a young boy with the same potency which the Synoptic Jesus brings to the task.  The Synoptic Jesus says (and it doesn't explicitly exclude his disciples):

O generation faithless and having been twisted, till when with you will I be? Till when will I put up with you? Be bringing to me him here.  And he gave rebuke to it the Jesus and came out from him the demon; and was cured the boy from the hour that.  Then having come toward the disciples to the Jesus according to private, Through what we not were able to expel it?  The ___ (however ____) is saying to them Through the little faith of you; truly for I am saying to you, if ever you may have faith as grain of mustard, you will say to the mountain this, Transfer from here there, and it will transfer, and nothing will be impossible to you.

It's basically the same narrative: with the Synoptic Jesus taking the role of God, the disciples facing the same problematic "casting out" of self that the YHWH is facing only in this case, the insurmountable weight isn't YHWH-as-Leviathan, it's YHWH-as-mountain.  Leviathan and the mountain are both metaphysical, representational constructs.  Immense, yes, but only in the human imagination.  Nothing physical actually exists in the sense that we think it does.  It isn't an engineering job. You don't have to visualize the MEANS by which you move the entrenched aquatic behemoth from its domain to "the face of the field" in the wilderness and then build the machinery with which you accomplish it.  The MEANS and the END are the same: faith. Whether you're YHWH or a human being, if you Increase your faith in God sufficiently the thing is already accomplished.  Get your mind OFF the imaginary thing that appears real: the mountain or Leviathin…and ONTO the real thing you aren't adequately and realistically imagining: your own faith.]

And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I, the YHWH, because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel.

It was worth a try to get the YHWH to go along with the "Leviathan construct" but -- whether consciously or unconsciously (my guess would be both) -- the YHWH switches metaphorical constructs abruptly.

The inhabitants of Egypt -- as opposed to Egypt itself -- are now the "broken reed" and are only being  dealt with relative to those inhabitants' own -- then current -- relationship to Israel as an unreliable Israeli ally.  The "broken reed" refers to Egypt's inadequacy as a staff.  You can't lean on it because it will break and is -- in fact -- already broken. 

It's actually a suitable metaphor for the YHWH, as well.

 The YHWH is an inadequate ally of Israel, Judah, God, human beings -- you name it.  A broken reed.  And plants are a creation of the YHWH so by switching to a reed as the metaphor for Egypt, the YHWH, to a degree, escapes self-indictment.  The reed is in the midst of the waters and, in fact, is endemic to the transition area between earth and water: the shoreline. But the reed doesn't pretend it IS the rivers or that it MADE the rivers.

(The Synoptic Jesus ventures near this as well when he addresses the crowds, asking them what they expected to see when they went out into the wilderness looking for John the Baptist as John's fame spread. Basically, what did you expect to see? A broken reed? It's a good metaphorical point.  John was baptizing in the wilderness of Bethany where the water meets the earth.  He wasn't accepted by Israel.  He certainly wasn't seen -- as Egypt in Ezekiel's time wasn't seen -- as a reliable ally of the Jewish authorities. But did that make him -- a great prophet -- a broken reed?)

I told you this chapter gets complicated.

I'll pick it up from there next week.

Best,

Dave  

Next Time: Cerebus in Matt's Life? ("past" Matt Rocks!)